County Spotlight: The importance of information sharing, learning and advocacy

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 22, 2026

By Mark Ozias

I write this morning from a perch in Orleans Parrish (County), which essentially comprises the great city of New Orleans. I am here on behalf of the Washington State Association of Counties for the annual conference of the National Association of Counties, which is the organization that supports county-wide elected officials (and especially county commissioners) from across America.

We are gathering for several days of information sharing, learning and advocacy. My first session will be a half-day, pre-conference workshop related to the national opioid settlements that have been made with state and local governments like Clallam County. It will highlight best practices in administration of these once-in-a-generation settlement dollars that counties may use to make innovative investments in prevention, treatment, recovery and harm reduction to strengthen public health responses to the opioid crisis.

Back home in Washington, the Washington State Association of Counties serves as the support and information hub for all county commissioners in our state. The longer I have served as a commissioner, the better I understand and support the vital role our state association plays in making us better and more effective elected officials.

Our state association plays three key roles to help us succeed.

The first is information-sharing and mutual learning.

All counties in our state face similar challenges and are working on similar issues: How do we fund infrastructure investments and repairs? How do we effectively use federal dollars when rules suddenly change? How do we better address behavioral health challenges in rural areas? What do successful economic development programs look like?

Through an annual statewide conference, weekly virtual learning sessions, a weekly newsletter and a series of podcasts the association works to broadly serve the educational needs of its members.

The second key role is legislative advocacy, which is primarily executed through a group called the Legislative Steering Committee.

Each of Washington’s 39 counties appoints a commissioner to represent their county on this body (Commissioner Mike French currently serves this role for us) and this group works together to develop an annual legislative agenda that supports the needs of all counties.

It isn’t hard to imagine that this can be a challenging effort!

Sometimes I-5 corridor counties struggle to understand challenges unique to our smaller rural counties, and other times commissioners from small rural counties struggle to see what they might have in common with a colleague from King or Pierce counties.

However, a commitment to working together coupled with an agenda development process that ensures that even the smallest county has a voice and can impact a decision ensures our efforts are successful. It means a great deal when all counties can use one voice to tell our story in Olympia.

The third key role played by the state association is to provide business resources and opportunities to counties.

For example, our county has taken advantage of a resource that has helped our county treasurer and her staff improve our ability to manage cash, long-term investments and banking relationships.

We are currently exploring one of the state association’s newest business partnerships related to fleet management services.

The county vehicle fleet is expensive to maintain; sheriff’s vehicles need to be regularly replaced, and huge pieces of road maintenance equipment require periodic replacement at great cost.

I am looking forward to learning about how we can be more efficient with public dollars in this arena.

It has been an honor serving as the president of the Washington State Association of Counties this year, and I am grateful for the extra learning opportunities I have had as a result.

The next few days will be filled to the brim with topics as diverse as AI in county government, rural health systems, water and sewer infrastructure tours, county strategies for supporting public health, support for elections and focus on diversifying revenues.

I look forward to sharing this learning with others in our community when I return.

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Mark Ozias is Clallam County Commissioner for District 1.